


Love is a Three Cornered Polygon

by Erisabesu (ErisabesuFic)



Category: Naruto
Genre: Humor, M/M, NaruSasu - Freeform, Romance, SasuNaru - Freeform, sns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:54:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22205191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ErisabesuFic/pseuds/Erisabesu
Summary: “The truth is, who’s to say how close we’d be now if [Sasuke] hadn’t shown up to ruin everything?”  [2010.03.15]Someone very close to Naruto is not thrilled about the guy who starts to monopolize him.  ♥  Set in the aftermath of Pain's attack on Konoha, then diverges slightly from there.
Relationships: Uchiha Sasuke/Uzumaki Naruto
Comments: 10
Kudos: 44





	Love is a Three Cornered Polygon

**“Love is a Three Cornered Polygon”**

♦

I first met Naruto when he was sixteen, almost seventeen. He was picking up emergency supplies in a makeshift general store downtown, shortly after the village had been destroyed, although by that time things had begun to calm down. Steps had been taken to organize the clearing of rubble and arrange relief for the homeless shinobi and villagers, so when he and I hooked up it was by necessity. But I dare say we became far more intimate than simple roommates. The truth is, who’s to say how close we’d be now if _he_ hadn’t shown up to ruin everything?

I shouldn’t be so angry; I know I can’t go back and change what happened. But there are some days Naruto looks so damn happy I wish that I could still be the only one who knew his innermost thoughts, his dreams, and the deepest depths of his heart.

Uchiha Sasuke changed everything. I’ll never forgive that guy.

Naruto lived with just me for a long time before he showed up. Naruto and I got along well, and worked well together. I was needed–I was happy. Sure, Naruto’s time and energy were in high demand, with helping village repairs or going on back-to-back missions to ensure Fire Country saved its reputation. Often I was left behind, waiting and listening, eager for the sound of his feet landing on the balcony of our small flat.

Other times I got to go with him and see firsthand what his enemies had done, his dreams troubling him at night and his dry lips mumbling _‘I should have been there sooner!’_ Or _‘Why didn’t I realize?’_ Or _‘Why couldn’t I have been strong enough to save him?’_

Him _who_? I wondered, since I could see so many faces of the dead held captive in his nightmares. But I didn’t ask; it didn’t feel right.

All I could gather was that someone important had died in the attack on Konoha, someone Naruto missed beyond what words could express. Eventually I discovered the man’s face while viewing Naruto’s less disturbing dreams, a man mysterious but kind; the part of his face not covered by the mask revealed a character I felt I’d have liked to know had things not been different.

Naruto clearly blamed himself for the man’s death, though I didn’t believe it for a moment. I told Naruto he could talk to me about anything, whatever he needed or wanted. He never did speak of it. But I know he felt better when we were together. Only I had the powers to caress his agitated brow, and whisper soothing, comforting words as he slept; the subtleties of my jutsus are limited solely to my kind.

Then one day someone knocked on the door–and immediately I knew something major had happened. The atmosphere was suddenly intense, sparking a crackle of static electricity in the background. Sakura was out of breath, Naruto dropped what he was doing and both of them talked too fast, the urgency spiraling up and up, Naruto grabbing random things and stuffing them into his knapsack and then next thing I knew he was gone.

And I’d been left there alone.

Naruto was gone a long time. A very long time. I stayed in the flat for days and days, watching stripes of light through the blinds move from one end of our home to the other. Sometimes it rained, and then there was only a blue-gray glow that came and went like a deep breath.

Naruto had always come back to me. Always. But for the first time I found myself wondering: _What if he didn’t come back?_ What would I do then?

I’d grown fond of him. Fond wasn’t a good word for it, actually, but I didn’t know what else to call it. A word to describe what he meant to me might not even exist, and words were never my strong point anyways. My realm functions without them. Dreams are built on images and yearnings, the secret places of the soul, the vista of intuition. Words are inadequate. They only lessen. I was fond of Naruto, and he cherished me. I decided that this is what I’d have to believe in, no matter what.

More time passed, and I grew stubbornly confident in my beliefs–especially my belief in Naruto. He would do what he had to do, and he’d survive. And when he was done, he’d come back.

What I hadn’t counted on was Naruto not coming back _alone_.

The moment I met the guy I knew he was bad news. Big trouble. Not the kind of person I wanted anywhere near our flat, much less inside it.

It didn’t help that while Naruto wasn’t looking, Uchiha Sasuke looked me straight in the eye and _glared_. I’d never felt such malice from a human being before. He looked at me like my existence was loathsome, my presence utterly worthless, and my company beneath him. I glared back as hard as I could, but he just sniffed and left the room to stand by Naruto at the refrigerator. I hated him from the first moment. And I was glad the feeling was mutual.

That first time Sasuke only stayed for a brief interval. Naruto stood in the front doorway for a long time after he left, lost in thoughts I couldn’t wait to know. Naruto unpacked his beaten-up knapsack and stripped his dirty clothes and showered, and with just the two of us again things felt like they were heading back to normal. He got into his pajamas, and my heart raced to see the familiar, friendly smile in his greeting before he settled down and went to sleep, my gentle touch on his forehead lulling him into peaceful rest. I felt warm and good again. We were together. He’d come back to me, just like I’d believed. It was so nice to slip back into our routine.

Only one thing ruined it. Naruto’s dreams had changed. _Changed._

It wasn’t obvious to me at first. But laced into the usual flow of his subconscious was something new. No … not new. It felt familiar, only sharper. Active. _Reactive._ A tiny thread of something off-color that penetrated everything else and disturbed the usual imagery; shook it up, or tilted it to the left. This thing made Naruto’s heart race, made his feet twitch under the blankets with the need to chase after and catch it. Naruto willingly plunged into an indigo sea and stretched deep into the darkness to reach the tail of an eel, slick and taunting, and much too fast for him.

It disturbed me. Where was the masked man he’d been grieving over for so long? I could sense no fear in Naruto, so I said nothing. But I did try to smooth the eel away, so Naruto could sleep in peace. It was easy, then, and I was successful.

Then Sasuke started coming around from time to time. Over several months he and I perfected the game of ignoring each other. At first, they’d just talk. They’d sit on the floor at the low table by our bed, angled towards each other at one corner for maybe thirty minutes before Sasuke stood up and put on his coat. Naruto always walked him to the front door, and then stood there to watch him vanish down the block. I never commented, but I think Naruto could tell that something was bothering me because I could see it was bothering him too.

Naruto’s sleep was always fitful after these visits, and for the first time I could do nothing about it. That eel, that glimpse of fin fluttering into cold black just would not go away, and Naruto continued to swim after it time and time again. Even worse, in the rest of his dreams I started to see shadows. Shadows that I recognized, but he didn’t, because in every corner of Naruto’s mind Sasuke was there hiding. With each visit to our flat, Sasuke’s dream presence intensified and so did Naruto’s pulse–and a desire that made his body shiver and ache in a way I couldn’t understand at all. It was liquid heat, it curled in his abdomen, and unlike the Ninetails it scared me to death.

With Naruto’s dreams in such a state I began to have severe insomnia, which scared me worst of all–this was _my_ realm, right? There shouldn’t be anything stronger than me… right?

The night things changed for good came all too soon. Sasuke stayed later than usual, monopolizing Naruto’s attention past dark. I watched them and worried that something might happen–Sasuke was acting strange, and so was Naruto. Their voices were different. Their body language was stilted. Awkward. I had the distinct sense of danger whenever Sasuke’s smooth words made Naruto laugh, and when Naruto’s low-murmured challenges made Sasuke look down and away, his skin flushed for a taut moment. This didn’t happen just once–it kept happening, each time the tension mounting until my guts were in knots and my heart yearned for him to just _go away_. Go away from here!

Instead, Sasuke got to his knees and slithered close enough to put his hands in places he shouldn’t, his mouth fixed to Naruto’s neck and leaving a mark first thing. I stared, frozen in horror as Naruto turned Sasuke’s head and bit him back, then kissed him hard and fast and pulled all that wild danger even closer with his two hands in Sasuke’s hair. I think in those first stupefied moments I really believed it couldn’t go farther. They’d never done anything like this before. There was still time for Naruto to realize the mistake and send Sasuke home for good.

But Sasuke slid up to the bed, and Naruto crawled over him, following, just like the dreams, and then I _knew_. And if I hadn’t been able to figure it out, Sasuke made it perfectly clear by flicking me off the bed to fall on the floor, helpless. Banished. Tortured by the sound of every moan, every lick, every rustle of discarded clothing and the sweep of open palms on bare skin. Sasuke’s soft, sibilant pleasure noises mixed and merged with Naruto’s panting breaths, their deeper groans hissed through teeth clenched in passion that didn’t stop when Sasuke’s shirt slipped off the side of the mattress and suffocated me with the perfume of his victory.  
I closed my eyes and prayed for it to end, tears welling in despair.

After that, I was truly lost. Sasuke left, and Naruto wandered around our small flat with a goofy grin on his face. I stayed where I was, unable to face him. Again I had no words for what I felt, although the one that danced behind my lips was _betrayal_ , though I clamped my mouth shut on it.

I hid, miserable, but eventually Naruto found me and made me come out, dusted off the cobwebs and shook out my dirtied clothes. His gentleness made me feel better, but I was leery of picking up where we left off—I could still smell Sasuke, in the blankets, in the air, the aroma permeating every corner of our home. And truth be told, I no longer wanted to see Naruto’s dreams, so very afraid of what I’d find there.

It’s always been impossible for me to say no to him, though. I’m sure he’d never mean to cause me grief. So when he turned out the lights, and curled up as usual, I had no choice but to watch his dreams closely and be ready to save him when the time came.

Naruto went to sleep easily enough, so I was unprepared for the onslaught of imagery that beat against my mind in shocking detail. The feel of Sasuke’s tongue as they kissed sent me reeling—and that was only the beginning. Naruto’s head was _full_. And not just his head, but also his heart.

That awful man deserved an award; Uzumaki Naruto was completely brainwashed. Sasuke had taken him over, body and spirit, in just the one night.

I watched it all, outraged, disbelieving that Uchiha Sasuke could possibly make those types of expressions, or whisper such insulting and silly, romantic things in the height of coupling. This person holding onto Naruto so tight couldn’t possibly be the same Sasuke that glared at me with unmasked, evil intentions. He couldn’t possibly make Naruto’s blood throb so fast, or bring him to climax with one carefully uttered phrase.

_What the hell did he know of love?!_

I was confused by everything I’d witnessed and felt. I could not fathom why Sasuke, of all the people I’d ever met inside Naruto’s dreams, could have this sort of influence over him, an influence I found risky and dangerous and ill-matching to the Naruto I knew. The replay of their passions finally ebbed, and then slipped into a gentler flow of light-tinted waters and indigo depths. My heart sank, the eel swimming just out of Naruto’s reach for the nth time.

How long must I continue to watch this, and be helpless against it? A trill of Naruto’s dream-laughter caught my waning, exhausted attention, and I shook myself back into focus. When I looked closer I found him grinning, shining, so very _happy_ it almost hurt to see him. He’d stopped underwater halfway down, hand beckoning, and what I’d always seen as an eel hiding in the deep within a charred coral skeleton became something bigger, something more. I couldn’t be sure, but what I saw next resembled an arm and hand, and when it wriggled forth and touched its cold fingers to Naruto’s the dream dissolved and he awoke with a startled breath.

He yawned and stretched, dislodging me a bit but I didn’t really mind. I could tell he was smiling, still, and when he fell back asleep it was with Sasuke’s name on his lips.

I frowned. I couldn’t help it–Sasuke hadn’t made me like him one bit. But as my anxiety quieted to less angry waves I was able to watch Naruto’s dreams with a different perspective, and while I didn’t like what I saw, I couldn’t find a way to argue with him. I used my jutsu to try and show Naruto he was in danger, that he should forget Sasuke and protect himself from any further association. But Naruto blocked me every time.

_‘You’re wrong_ ,’ his dream-self insisted, that grin on his face. _‘He’s not evil. He’s good. He’s mine. He’s worth it.’_

And the last, which was the hardest for me to accept: _‘I need him.’_

I kept a close watch on their encounters, waiting for the time when Sasuke’s true colors would show. Sometimes they’d sit and talk as before. Sometimes they’d make food. Sometimes they’d grab shirt collars and flak jackets and begin kissing before the door was shut; everything in reverse-order. Sometimes Naruto didn’t come home until the next morning, still wearing the same clothes. I didn’t need to guess whose house he’d stayed in, or whose pillows had cradled his sleeping head.

But the astounding truth of the matter was that Naruto was happy–I’d never seen him like this before. It would have worried me except for the odd glimpses of Sasuke I could see through Naruto’s dream flow, made from his memories. The Sasuke he saw was sometimes bitter and angry, but had an underlying capacity for kindness that seemed misplaced if you only looked at the outside. He showed it Naruto, though, in small unspoken ways, and sometimes in the spoken–Sasuke always chose his words carefully, but for effect. And in this way, I could see how Naruto had been irreversibly infected.

I still didn’t like Sasuke much, but I’d almost started to believe Sasuke was as good as Naruto said, when the moment of truth finally came: In one motion, Sasuke grabbed me and dangled me in mid-air, sneering.

I tried to cough, strangled by Sasuke’s slim, deadly fingers, at once knowing he could kill me without a second thought. He’d never touched me before, so I hadn’t known until then that he commanded fire and lightning, both of which could destroy me stitch by stitch in an instant without much effort. The power I felt in him was incredible, and I thought that if I had to be in contact with him for longer than the next four seconds I’d faint–if I didn’t die first.

Sasuke’s eyes hardened to ruby glass with the force of his hatred. “Why in the hell do you keep this thing? You should get rid of it.”

A snap of cold fear ripped through me. I turned my silent pleas to the only one who might be able to save me.

“Hey, leave it alone.” Naruto reached to take me back, but Sasuke pivoted his feet and held me further out of reach.

“Don’t tell me you actually wear this? It’s _ridiculous_.”

Naruto stepped in and made another grab for me, though he missed. He tickled Sasuke’s ribs instead, and Sasuke made a funny _‘oof’_ noise and buckled to the side, lurching in defensive twists until we all tangled on the bed. Naruto snatched me from Sasuke’s hand and held me safe, using his other hand to hold Sasuke at bay.

“Don’t touch it, it’s mine,” Naruto growled, placing me carefully on the pillow farthest from reach. He soon took hold of Sasuke’s wrists, pinning him.

I was scared for him–he couldn’t possibly know who he was messing with! But to my astonishment, Sasuke looked up at Naruto and made what might have been half a smile, and then he chuckled.

“Why? You really think I’ll let you wear that hideous thing tonight?”

“Yeah, maybe you will,” Naruto teased, settling their bodies into something more suggestive and–well, maybe at this point it wasn’t such a surprise that they found this sort of thing comfortable. Naruto bent his head and kissed him, slow and then more playful.

I averted my eyes, trying in vain to calm my stretched nerves after being so frightened. The near-death experience gave birth to the terrifying idea that the closer Naruto got to Sasuke, the more chances Sasuke would have to do away with me. The moment may have passed, but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be _more_ ; a guy like him would probably be a creative executioner.

I felt a heavy blanket of despair begin to settle over me, and then Naruto chose to break their kiss, looking over at me with all the intensity of emotion I’ve always felt for him.

“I mean it, okay? I don’t want you messing it up or anything, because it’s special. Like a part of me. And you’re just going to have to live with it, whether you like it or not.”

Sasuke rolled his eyes, and made an offensive noise in response. But that day, and every day after, he respected Naruto’s wishes, never once laying an angry hand on me or putting me at risk.

I might have started to like him a tiny, miniscule bit for that, except that I had to endure the two of them being touchy-feely for the rest of the afternoon, shaking the squeaky bed frame hard and fast enough to give me a mega-migraine.

I won’t forgive Uchiha Sasuke for taking my place in Naruto’s heart and soul. But it was because of him that I got to hear Naruto’s true feelings for me that day, words I never knew I needed to hear.

Funny how things work out like that.

—

Ω


End file.
